


When the Fay go Marching

by Owaya1



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Amateur Poetry Hour, Betrayal, Blood and Gore, Dancing, Definitely a Bit of Murder, Fairy!Viktor, Hardly any at all, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Overuse of Bird Symbolism, Sword Fighting, Swordsman!Yuuri, Viktor is a Very Scary Fairy, a Decent Dose of Weirdness, very mild sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 20:45:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11952309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owaya1/pseuds/Owaya1
Summary: The first time Yuuri saw a fairy, it was with his grandmother on a night when the moon was half and the worlds were equal.The second time Yuuri saw a fairy, it was on the battlefield.The fantasy AU in which Viktor is of the fay, and Yuuri is a swordsman who dances like he knows what magic is. But fairies are not known for kindness and magic is not meant for men, — the worlds are separate for a reason, and perhaps fairies were never really built for love at all.





	When the Fay go Marching

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
> Hello everyone!  
> This fic was written for the 2017 Yoi Shit Bang, and I'd like to take a minute to send some love to the mods for hosting this event, (I know you worked hard) and everyone I've gotten to know over the course of this summer. You Guys are The Best™
> 
> In extension of this, a special thank you goes out to Narikopathfinder and Empukko who have both encouraged, beta'ed, and given invaluable advice. Nari especially has been a well of brilliant ideas and insight, and I don't know what I'd be posting without her, but I know it wouldn't have been this.
> 
> I've never written anything for Yoi before, but I hope I did alright.  
> Art for this fic was done by the amazing [the-world-of-illyas-james](http://the-world-of-illyas-james.tumblr.com)  
> [direct link here](http://the-world-of-illyas-james.tumblr.com/post/164821284164/diemnocturnus-so-i-entered-the-yoi-shit-bang) Please check it out!
> 
> Rated T but please heed the tags! This fic contains themes of death, violence and betrayal.

 

 

 

_(“Listen close, listen hard_

_For his is the most the dangerous kind,_

_The fay will gladly take your heart,_

_and leave just ash behind.”)_

 

**Now.**

 

 

 

A man walks quietly down a well-trodden road. He has black hair and a sweet face. He is average sized but fit. He walks as if he knows where he is going. There is a sword hanging from his hip, sheathed and sealed. When travellers pass him on horse or in carts, they ignore him or they fear him and hurry past. The isolation loosens the stress in his shoulders a little with every step he takes but the worry never leaves his eyes.

Winter nips at the air, and autumn is drawing to a close with an almost rabid enthusiasm. White clouds of breath escapes the man as he walks and the softness of the warm mist in the cold air reminds him of a place he has just recently left.

A crossroad inn sits at the cusp of a steep scarp where a bridge arches over the river cutting lazily into the bedrock many metres below. The man makes as if to walk past, — he is not interested in shelter or company, — but the name of the inn catches his eye. ‘Giacometti’s Ponies’ the sign reads.

The man gulps and glances down the road as if searching for a reason to hurry on his way. He doesn’t find one, so he musters his courage and slinks inside with something like trepidation slowing his steps.

It is a slow night and there are few customers in the common room. The season for peddlers and travel is almost over and the roads have been bad lately — or so the man has heard. He wouldn’t really know.

Behind the bar stands a war-bitten man with golden hair and scarred knuckles. The crow’s feet around his eyes are deep but it is hard to tell whether or not it was smiles that put them there.

“What can I get you?” The innkeeper asks, glancing up and away with a friendly, impersonal smile.

“Just a mug of whatever you have on tap.” The man replies and sits down gingerly on a rickety bar stool.

“ _Yuuri_?” the innkeeper asks incredulously, having finally looked at the man properly. The beer in the innkeeper’s hand hovers inches above the bar, seemingly frozen there, as Christophe Giacometti gapes wordlessly.

Yuuri lowers his head and shrugs, drawing his mouth into a thin line as he fights the shake in his shoulders.

“Hello Chris.” He says quietly. “I gather you haven’t really seen me in a while.”

“A while? We… Yuuri we thought you were dead or that you deserted or that—” Chris cuts off short at Yuuri’s flinch. “Okay.” Chris says and nods, but his eyes are still wide and he looks a little panicked. “Okay, I guess we were wrong. Thank god. It’s good to see you Yuuri.”

Yuuri smiles, and it is a small smile but he still wears it like he means it. “It’s good to see you too. This is… a nice place. I never thought I’d see you become an innkeeper though.” Chris smiles at that.

“I spent so much time in taverns, I figured I might as well sell some of the booze I drink as well. Besides, it’s not all mine. Co-owned. I mostly run the side business upstairs.” Chris makes a vague gesture towards the ceiling. The suggestive clothes a few of the girls and boys waiting the tables are wearing give Yuuri the general idea of what Chris means.

“That’s very… um…”

Chris waves Yuuri’s attempt at a reply off with a fond smile and finally sets down the glass of beer on the bar.

“It is what it is Yuuri. They’d be doing it anyway somewhere else if not here. The world has changed while you were gone, and not all for the better.”

“Right.” Yuuri says and takes a gulp of his drink. He can feel his shoulders hunching under Chris’ scrutiny, like he is shrinking in his seat just by sitting there.

“Where are you headed then? Home?” Chris asks after pause. If Yuuri had looked up then, he would have seen the concerned frown creeping onto the older man’s face.

“Yes. That was the only thing I could think of after I…” Yuuri grimaces and stares stubbornly down into his drink. “You know.”

Chris nods slowly, then gently says “You could have stayed you know. At the camp I mean, they would have taken you in again if you explained it to them. They need young men more than ever lately.” Chris smiles, and the curve of his lips lack the edge of the smirk Yuuri once knew so well. “God, just look at you. Somehow I forgot how young you always looked.”

“Maybe you just got old, Chris.” Yuuri tries, but they both know that isn’t really the case. Yuuri looks down into his drink again. “I couldn’t stay at the camp. It’s not just cowardice either, I… I realised something while I was… away. I can’t fight in that war anymore, I think it would destroy me if I tried.”

“The war hasn’t changed, you know. The world at large has, but not the war, — it never changes. But I guess it’s true what they say.” Chris looks down at the bar and picks up the mug he had been polishing before Yuuri interrupted. His hands move deftly over the polished metal. “I can see it in you anyway. People really do come back changed.”

“People always change.” Yuuri says, and something about the way his mouth shape those words speak of defiance and old arguments. Chris lifts an eyebrow but doesn’t comment. Chris never did figure out how to read Yuuri correctly — perhaps no one ever really will.

“Thank you for the beer.” Yuuri says once he has emptied the mug and has refused a refill. He hurries out the door and down the road before Chris can offer him anything more. Yuuri points his feet homewards and lets his anxious heart drive his pace up into a light jog, — a steady rhythm he can maintain for hours. The brief conversation with Chris has jarred him, the image of crow’s feet and scars and the whitening of Chris’ hair prickle like barbs in Yuuri’s mind, each its own cruel reminder of lost time.

Yuuri runs well into the afternoon before his good boots betray him, and he is forced to slow his pace to an awkward limp. He makes no move to settle down for the night but when the grey bulk of a standing stone becomes visible through the trees, he allows himself to stop.

Yuuri knows better than to pass old magic by, — has always known it better than most, —and there is something hot constricting in his chest at the thought of fairy fires and an evening of distanced beauty.

The standing stone is magnificent in its ancient mystery, tall and looming and covered in gold and purple lichen. Time has tilted it slightly, but the stone still stands upright, its surface scoured smooth. Yuuri runs a hand across it, his mind stretching somewhere else beyond the hardness of stone beneath his palm. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he can smell midnight blossoms when he concentrates, thinks maybe he can taste clear spring water and feel the touch of red-tinted moonlight.

Yuuri withdraws from the stone as the sun slips away over the horizon. He sets up camp next to an old oak, trusting its deep roots and its clever twisted bough as he carefully tends his fire, letting it burn hot but not high. He nestles the last of his coals in the bed of burning timbre, grateful for their warmth and protection, as the chilly air grows cold.

Yuuri places a small fine cup of glazed clay and dusted gold on the far side of the fire, closest to the standing stone and its creatures. The cup is chipped, a ragged piece missing from its lip, but it will do. Yuuri is careful as he fills it, his bottle of amber fruit wine almost empty.

The night descends, quicker now, as he has travelled north. The cup empties, and Yuuri watches safe behind his fire as pixies dance in the shadows, as polite and achingly beautiful, as they are terrible.

The moon shines new tonight, a haunting Cheshire smile thin and fragile in the sky. Yuuri keeps the fire hot, lets it shield him as he waits for dawn. Yuuri watches as a man and a woman step out from behind the standing stone. They are dressed for court, poised and breath taking in their brilliance. The woman’s ball gown sweeps across the forest floor without snagging or disturbing the undergrowth and it changes in style and colour every time she passes behind a tree. The man who leads her is equally beautiful, his features a masculine version of hers but they too change fluidly with every step in and out of view. More pairs join them, each stunning and different and homogeneous.

A hand snakes its way down Yuuri’s thigh, a warm body pressing into his side.

“You’re on the wrong side of the fire.” Yuuri whispers and feels a shiver run down his spine.

“Am I?” Viktor sounds unsure, as if the concept of belonging anywhere is foreign to him.

“Why are you here?”

“Perhaps I wanted to see you.” Yuuri dares not look, but he catches sight of silver strands glinting in his periphery all the same.

“Liar.” Yuuri whispers and there was once a time when he would not have believed it true. Viktor laughs, clear and loud, the sound catching the attention of the other fay. Their heads turn in inquiry, sharp, pearly teeth flashing answering smiles.

“The dancing will start soon.” Viktor says, “It is a night for dancing. Can you hear the music? The seelie has brought their finest tonight.”

Yuuri shakes his head. “The fire is hot,” he says, “there is iron in the coal.”

“Douse it.” Viktor whispers, his hand carving a path up Yuuri’s thigh, fingers splaying out into a caress. “Come dance with me instead.”

Yuuri closes his eyes.

Breathes.

Counts each wild thump of his heart until it calms. When Yuuri opens his eyes again the hand on his thigh has retreated and Viktor has shifted slightly away.

“Orion is bright tonight.” Viktor’s head is tilted towards the stars, and his shoulders are slumped. Yuuri risks a glance at him, his first real one this night. There is something swimming in those icy depths of Viktor’s eyes, — something besides starlight and magic. “But your stars are hardly any calmer than mine. Did you know? It was his lover who killed Orion with an arrow aimed to his head. Or it was a scorpion. I always forget.”

Yuuri swallows, the taste of soot in his mouth where there had once been wine.

 

**Then.**

 

 

 

The first time Yuuri saw a fairy, it was with his grandmother on a night when the moon was half and the worlds were equal. She taught him how to build a fire and how to offer half his share. _Never empty the bottle completely,_ she had whispered, _or they will take what you aren’t prepared to give._ And she had leaned against the trunk of old father ash and tucked Yuuri against her side as magic spun flowers and frost and stardust.

Yuuri, so young back then, had watched quietly, his rabbit heart in his mouth and his eyes as bright as stars, as the ghost of a boy danced between the trees. The boy had long silver hair and eyes like ice and he danced to a tune only he could hear. A sharp white blade in the boy’s hand snapped soundlessly in the air with every turn, and every step and flick was both powerful and feint, both delicate and strong.

“Who is he?” Yuuri had breathed in his grandma’s ear, but she had smiled and shaken her head. “No one, love, just a fairy pretending to be a boy.”

“A fairy?” Yuuri’s eyes widened in alarm, and his gaze snapped back to the boy. “But fairies are demons. Everyone knows.”

“Everyone is wrong then. Listen Yuuri, some fairies are _like_ demons, and some of them might as well be demons, but the same can be said about some of us. Fairies are mischievous and wild and unpredictable but they are also just fairies, and they do what fairies do — which is often simply being who they are.”

“Oh.” Yuuri whispered, and his eyes followed the dancing glint of silver through the trees, thinking that there was something very true and beautiful about simply being who you are. And he wondered if maybe who Yuuri was, — or would become — could be even half as talented and enchanting and true as this fairy dancing through the forest.

It was his grandma who gave him his first blade. It was a delicate thing, dull with age but still bright with polish and care. It was made entirely of steel, — not even the pommel was iron, — and it fit awkwardly in Yuuri’s small hands even though it had been designed for a child. He cut himself the first time he swung it.

 His sister had shook her head at him at that, and she had made as if to take to blade away from him, saying that he was too young and too sweet and that he would only hurt himself with it.

But Yuuri had clutched the blade tighter, and he had swung it again and again until the grip fit in his palm and his arms didn’t shake when he parried. When he closed his eyes he could see a boy with long silver hair, moving swiftly through the underbrush, a blade held carelessly in the boy’s hand like it belonged there.

Yuuri moved like the boy in his memories and when a stroke or a sequence of steps felt right, he would smile gently and he would wonder if maybe one day more pieces of him could be beautiful.

“You remind me of old magic,” Yuuri’s teacher told him once as he gently corrected Yuuri’s stance, “When the worlds were together not apart.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Yuuri asked and thought of his Grandma, five years gone by then, but the loss of her still fresh.

“I think yes,” Celestino said, “Better to seek new things than to yearn for what has been long lost.”

“Maybe I’ll find it.” And in that moment he could almost taste the truth of it, the yearning in his young foolish heart so earnest he was _sure_ it had to be true, _had_ to be possible. But Celestino had shaken his head, no.

“Lost is lost.” His teacher had told him, “and some things were lost for a reason.”

Still, Yuuri yearned; let his sword dance in patterns that were not his own, and he felt most beautiful, most fluid and precise, when he fought with forest flowers and icy blue eyes nestled somewhere close to his heart.

“You should concentrate on your efficiency and on the cleanness of your stroke.” Celestino told him, and there was a worried undercurrent in his voice that made Yuuri stop and listen. “The flourishes are good for showmanship and feints, but use them too liberally and they will cost you your life out there on the battlefield.”

“The battlefield?” Yuuri asked, his heart jumping, his stomach dropping. A raw, ruthless beast that could be nothing but fear clawed at Yuuri skin. “But only the best get sent to the front.”

“Well someone seems to think you’re among them, Yuuri. And much as I hate to see you go, I can’t help but agree. It’s an honour, you should be proud.”

 

*

 

The war camp was a sprawled, chaotic mess, camp followers and peddlers effectively negating the military’s careful rows and neat picket lines. The war had waged for so long that permanent structures had been erected and misshaped buildings that must once have been wagons stood clumsily between sturdy tents. Small children ran wild between canvas tents and wooden wagons, knocking over pegs and snapping guy ropes in their haste.

Yuuri watched the children fondly, thinking of triplets and home and a quiet place to hone the shape of his Prise De Fer and the subtlety of the feint in his compound attack.

He had fought in one skirmish so far, stationed in the fringes to hold the line and little more. The sword on his hip was still largely untested, the steel shiny and new from the forge, inlaid with patterns of dark, matted iron.

Mud caked the winding paths between haphazard buildings, and everywhere soldiers were sharpening their swords or wiping down armour. Yuuri’s friend Phichit was talking animatedly with a group of warriors a short distance away, begging for tips on how to improve his footwork.

A fine-boned boy sat on the ground a few paces away, a gaggle of younger children gathered around him in near-reverent silence as the boy deftly juggled three stones into the air. The boy’s hair was the colour of wheat and as long and fine as feathers. It fell into his eyes and crowded his face so only his mouth was visible as he chanted an old children’s rhyme, the beat of his voice consonant with the slap of stone against his palms.

The words did not quite reach Yuuri where he stood, but he thought the metre and cadence familiar, a silly game half remembered from his childhood — it made him think of magic for some reason, but couldn’t quite recall why.

“Yuuri. They’re reassigning squads. Chris said he could put us in his sub-squad if we were quick. Come on!” Phichit tugged at Yuuri’s sleeve eagerly, drawing him away. Phichit was younger than Yuuri by several years, — too young really, to be fighting in a war — with sun-kissed skin and glossy black hair and an exuberance that penetrated everything he did. Yuuri let himself be led. Behind them, the final words of the chant were underscored by the hard smack of stone against wood.

_Smack._

_Smack._

_Smack._

The children cheered. From the far end of the field came the deep blare of a horn, calling soldiers to war.

The war itself was an ancient one, many centuries old by then. Yuuri couldn’t quite remember whom it was they fought, or why it was they fought. It had something to do with a lady general and a stolen treasure. It was of little importance. In the end, all anyone knew was that they did fight, — and that every month an army would assemble at the edge of their lands, taking and giving ground as the war ebbed and flowed. It was considered an honour to fight, as only the best were selected and only the best survived. The Enemy had a fondness for talent, and so talent flocked from all the four corners of the world to showcase their skill. It was a game, and it was a test, and it was life and death.

Phichit pulled Yuuri through the camp, as thousands of trained soldiers sprang into action around them, some saddling horses or strapping on armour. Yuuri wore only his tough leather guards, but for now that would have to do — chainmail was expensive, and he had found that it often hindered him more than it helped.

“Chris!” Phichit waved enthusiastically at a blond, densely built man who wore the golden knots of a squad leader on his shoulder. “You’ll let us fight in your squad right? I’d feel better fighting with a squad leader on point who knows what he is doing.”

Chris smirked and winked at them as they were interrupted by the second set of horns. The army was required to be assembled by the third.

“The two of you are taking the rear, but be ready to join me at point if I give the signal for rotation. One of my veterans took a wound last month, and it hasn’t been healing right.”

“Yes sir.” They chorused, though Yuuri’s nerves were starting to make themselves known. He could feel his muscles begin to tremble as Chris’s squad found their place on the front line. Phichit smiled brightly at him, the sun catching his pearly teeth.

Out across the battlefield, the Enemy had assembled, a forbidding line of skilled swordsmen, waiting to test their blades on flesh.

“Steady now.” Chris called, and he was smiling too, a long broad sword ready in his hand.

The third set of horns sounded, and its blare seems much louder than all the rest.

Thousands of warriors began their charge.

It took only a flick of Yuuri’s wrist for blood to run down the length of his blade, soaking into the hilt. The blood was warm and thick and he could taste it on his lips as he danced.  Duck, step, thrust, a hamstring was cut. Step, step, lounge, and an eye would never open again

The Enemy’s line flexed, pushed outwards, held. Yuuri missed Chris’ shout for rotation, and he yelped as a hand grabbed his collar from behind and thrust him into point next to Phichit. Chris managed to flash his teeth at Yuuri, — a wild, bloody grin — and then five enemies were upon them in a flash of bone-handled swords, and copper tipped spears.

Yuuri barely dodged a stab to his gut, and then he was dancing again, and everything else fell away. His breath came raggedly, and every opponent seemed stronger than the last.

A serrated knife of bone almost took out Yuuri’s eye, as a small, dainty, figure with wheat coloured hair and sharp teeth crowded him with blows almost too quick to block. The Enemy matched his pace strike for strike, assessing, and Yuuri could feel his chest constrict under the scrutiny, the furious gaze — felt with distant certainty that he was lacking where his opponent was not.

A jab. A parry, an improvised upper hand cut. The battle turned, and the figure — a blurred image of teeth and scowls and foul mouthed curses in Yuuri’s mind — withdrew before Yuuri could deal the final blow. Other enemies followed, and still, he fought and both the metal of his blade and his soul soaked in the blood smeared across his sword.

The tide of the battle turned, as suddenly as they were losing they were winning and the Enemy retreating. There was no reason for it, this war followed no logic discernable to man — it simply was. Simply is. Always will be.

Decay hung heavy in the air, thick and sweet, centuries of fighting painted into the ground, every rock once a bone, everygrain of sand doused red with iron. A flower, found nowhere else, bloomed in the shade of broken skulls and hollow eye sockets. A songbird, sweet and blue and gold, was gorging itself on newly fallen flesh. And there, at the far edge of the field, stood a figure with silver hair and a smile as sharp as the sword in his hand.

Yuuri ached at the beauty of him.

There is a forgotten interlude then, a space of seconds and minutes between seeing and nearing and stumbling so close that Yuuri could see the blue ice in the fairy’s eyes and the careless boredom in the set of his shoulders and in the tilt of his head. A body lay at the fairy’s feet; exotic burnished skin and dark shiny hair and a thorax caved in and hollow where ribs had been smashed and lungs collapsed.

Bored eyes cut to Yuuri then, a small coy smile twisting the fairy’s features into something almost affable.

“Have you come to dance with me?” The fairy asked, and the blood-soaked bone of the fairy’s blade glinted with polish and promise of death.

“I—” Was all Yuuri managed as he stumbled to a halt, his heart galloping, clogging up his throat and all the words churning in his stomach. He realised that he knew the body on the ground, — but there was a disconnection between the knowing and the seeing. The actuality of the situation lay somewhere beyond the unconscionable and past the grasp of Yuuri’s comprehension. He could not muster anything but sadness at the sight of broken ribs and twisted limbs. This war was never about anger or pettiness or revenge; you do not hate the winter for killing your crops and you not hate the Enemy for striking down your friends.

A nameless force twisted and flexed, the pieces of the world seemed slightly askew.

“What is one of the fay doing here?” Yuuri blurted at last with only the barest trace stammer, his mind disregarding the nonsensical and instead proffered one of the many questions roaring to be asked.

“You know me.” The fairy’s smile turned sharp, head tilting and long fingers curling speculatively around his jaw. It was not a question. “Why don’t you tell me instead, little manling? Why are you here?”

The long sharp edge of the fairy’s blade dribbled crimson onto rusty earth. Yuuri tried to swallow down his panic.

“I— I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Maybe I don’t know either, or maybe it really doesn’t matter.” The fairy suggested, but his long clever fingers and the glint in his eyes said otherwise.

“No.” Yuuri shook his head, “It has to matter somehow, that one of the fay are here. Why would—“

“Maybe I simply love the dance.” The fairy said, and even the clearest ice is opaque when layered thick enough. “So come dance with me.” The flick of his sword was an invitation.

Twilight had come, the sun having finally fallen fully beneath the horizon but its grey light lingering, ever so slowly dulling into dusk.

Yuuri took a step then halted, his heart pounding in his chest. There was a kind of indulgence in the fairy’s stance, an unimpressed lilt to his voice. Yuuri chafed at it, — outrage and disappointment and indignation mixing with latent worship and generating a whirlpool of blind determination that fogged over his mind.

The sharp clang of steel and iron inlay clattering heedlessly to the ground bought Yuuri the startled second of hesitation he needed.  With more bravery than Yuuri had ever before possessed, he took the final step and tugged the silver haired fairy into a waltz, — Yuuri’s sword abandoned for another kind of dance, something sweet and wild and fast enough to be a challenge.

“Oh!” the fairy exclaimed, “That was clever.” He let out a delighted laugh, his sharp smile stretching broad and into something heart-shaped as the simple steps turned intricate.

Around them the battlefield grew quiet, the moans and whimpers of wounded warriors stilling as the evening chill crept into the ground beneath them and hypothermia and blood loss stole their consciousness away from reality and on to other places.

If Yuuri had known something more of magic than he did, he might have noticed something off about the decaying flesh littered across the field. He might have wondered at the shape of a skull or the hardness of a foot. But Yuuri did not know, and so he didn’t notice.

There was something heady about the fragile tension hovering in the air, the day sighing tiredly as the landscape’s stark, gruesome contours dulled and rounded and only the sensation of fingers on a waist remained crisp in Yuuri’s mind. A pair of icy blue eyes became shimmering lanterns in a purpling world. A songbird trilled prettily, announcing an orchestra of sound. Cicadas intoned a perfect metronome; a wood dove crooned a bass. Old magic thrummed like a river rushing beneath their feet, golden and tantalizing and terrible.

The splintering sound of sun-bleached bone and the squelch of pooled blood under booted feet went unheard as Yuuri tipped his partner into a dip, lead him into a spin, a step, a lift.

“Your name.” The fairy demanded, voice breathless with laughter, eyes bright with something that might have been joy. Yuuri told him readily, the sound of his name on the fairy’s lips like water trickling from a spring, fresh and clear and potent.

“And yours?” Yuuri begged, and the name _Viktor_ was the honey-sweet smell of flowers blooming in late summer.

They moved away from the battlefield then, trading the broken field for the ancient woods that lay beyond. A pheasant clucked at Yuuri warningly, an owl watched silently from within its stolen nest.

Owls, — they do not care for men.

And up above and to the west the missing moon rose red and full. The stars were all ajumble, scattered across the sky in unfamiliar patterns.

The orderly one-two-three of the waltz was abandoned then, as a distant flute trilled another tune and Viktor lead Yuuri into a dance that was wilder and freer than anything Yuuri had ever danced before.

 

 **Now**.

 

“Why did his lover kill him? Orion I mean.” Yuuri asks despite himself because the silence has begun to cut like a knife digging into bone. Viktor smiles, but the sadness does not leave him.

“She was tricked by her brother Apollo to use his head for target practice.” Viktor blinks slowly at the stars. “But really, it was just carelessness.”

On the other side of the fire the couples have begun to congregate, stepping into intricate patterns and curtseying in preparation for a dance. Frost curl on leaves and grass wherever they tread and dew is heavy in the air, sparkling in giant spider webs like diamonds hung on the very finest lace.

“It’s a waltz.” Viktor says, and begins humming, adagio, and Yuuri thinks maybe he can hear the oboe, its soft voice twining with Victor’s as the couples glide seamlessly into step, slow and poised and exquisite.

“And you?” Yuuri asks as the first movement ends, the couples bowing and curtseying. The cicadas are politely holding their breath. “Would you have killed me?”

“No.” And the firmness of that answer is gratifying despite its insufficiency. “But it is like I said,” Viktor turns his eyes on Yuuri, blue and deep enough to drown in. He shrugs. “Carelessness.”

 

**Then.**

 

 

 

It was a slow thing for Yuuri.

There could be no headfirst falling, no dash of the heart or heady lust to cloud the fears that churned ever-present even with magic tonguing at his senses like a gentle lover’s kiss.

Instead, it was a quick, fast-paced dance through a forest, and a slow gliding walk down a riverbank, and it was a gentle hand against his thigh and it was forgetting all sense of self save for the image mirrored back at him in a pair of ice-blue eyes. It was the testing of teeth against lips and a back pressed against ancient stone, and it was quiet mindless chatter as time slipped past them, unheeded and forgotten.

Time was not of fay, you see. It passed of course, — as all things pass — but not in any meaningful or rational way. Sometimes it slowed and the moon froze in its lonely trek across the sky, and every beat of the heart was a perfect stolen second. Sometimes time stretched out into infinity, like a rubber band or like a mass of hot sugar being pulled apart — thinning but never parting. Fairies have no need for time, — or perhaps time has no need for them.

“I saw you dancing once, when I was just a child.” Yuuri blushed, his eyes finding his hands where they lay clasped in his lap. “You were practising the sword. I have wanted to dance like you did that night ever since.”

“You should have come danced with me.” Viktor’s eyes shone wide and pale in the thin light. His lips were red. “I’m sure it would have been more fun if you had.” A nervous smile tugged at Yuuri’s mouth.

“I wouldn’t have known how, back then. I just knew I wanted to learn.”

“Still.” Viktor reached out and let his hand brush Yuuri’s bangs aside. For the length of a single heartbeat, time stopped completely as cool fingers traced the arch of Yuuri’s eyebrow and the shape of his jaw. “I wish you had come a little sooner.”

 _‘Ah,’_ Yuuri thought, dazed and lost in the feeling of magic warping time back into existence, _‘so this is what love feels like.’_ His heart trembled in his chest.

“Why are you here? Will you tell me?” Yuuri asked, fleeing the implications of his earlier thoughts.

Soft grass and moonlight filled his senses, and he found that the asking was easy now, despite his earlier loss for words. The coy taste of magic teased his tongue with its strangeness.

“Here?” Viktor looked around. The flowered silk of his open robes matched the colour of his eyes. The edges of his sleeves were dyed an uneven red.

“No, I meant on the battlefield. Why were you there fighting?”

Viktor gazed at Yuuri, wide-eyed at first then coyly, “Are you really asking a fairy for reasons?” Then bemused, a brow arching in incredulity. “Yuuri, fairies are the children of whimsy, of chaos.” Viktor leapt lightly to his feet, gesturing grandly to the cobalt sky and its untidy stars. “We are creatures ruled by pure desire. Don’t ask us for our reasons, you won’t like them if we have them.”

Yuuri smiled and it was a genuine one because those were the only kind of smiles he had ever been taught to wield. But the curve of it was a little uneven, his eyes a shade too cautions. A nagging sense of unease crept up on him then, and the first roots of doubt began to take hold in his heart. There was something flighty in Viktor’s demur, a casualness in his choice of words that unsettled Yuuri who always chose his words so carefully.

With new eyes he took in the meadow, the brash moon, the incoherent stars. Not far away loomed a Standing stone unmarked by time or weather, its surface still rough from chisel and hammer.

With sudden clarity he remembered a battlefield, fraught with misery and the sour smell of bile sticky and dense in the air.

Here the air was sweet and fresh, the scent of midnight blossoms wafting softly from where the vines hung like garlands from old beech trees, their petals still closed, but opening slowly, eager for the strike of twelve.

There was a feeling, hanging suspended and breathless in the air, a sense of fragility, — of impending breakage. The old magic thrummed so heavily through the meadow that it was hard to hear it at all.

“The moon is full. I could have sworn it was just a sliver yesterday.” Yuuri murmured. His disquieted heart pounded hard against his ribs as his eyes searched for familiar things and found none.

“It was.” Viktor agreed, unconcerned. “That’s why it is full here.”

“I’m in fay.” Yuuri said, because it was a truth he hadn’t known until right then. The simple act of breathing became noticeably harder.

But Yuuri was a soldier, — even if he was largely untested, — and here, in the nearness of the being that had haunted his dreams since childhood, who had inadvertently shaped and sharpened all the edges of his form, he found that the fear itself was a familiar enemy.

“Of course you are.” Victor said lightly, as if Yuuri’s view of the world had not just been perpetually shifted. Viktor stood in the meadow as he had on the battlefield, at ease but not at home. From his hip hung a sword, long and gently cresting.

There are stories, told only in taverns when the wine flows and the night is ebbing into morning, about fairies and old magic luring good people away into the fay. Sometimes the teller knows someone who knows someone who made the trip and back. Sometimes it is a story about a man who came back home, old and gnarled, when he had only been missing for a day. Sometimes it is a story about a woman who still looked a girl though she had been missing for a decade. Sometimes it is a story about a child.

But the children never make it back. Those are the sad stories; Yuuri had only ever heard a single one told.

Yuuri was not a child, — he put childhood behind him the day he left home to join the war. But he knew he was in trouble. He knew he was a stranger in a world not meant for men.

Viktor reached out a hand and his smile was something soft, but now Yuuri could see hidden edges where there had before been none. Yuuri took the hand anyway; he let Viktor pull him to his feet.                                

“Come on,” Viktor said, and Yuuri followed.

Yuuri Katsuki believed in many things, he believed that people were fundamentally good and that fairies dance when the moon is full. He believed that his grandmother knew things about the world and the shape of things that he never got the chance to learn, and that someone can be as beautiful as they are terrible. He believed that life and death were just waypoints in a soul’s journey through the universe.

And though Yuuri rarely ever believed in himself he found that belief, once more, came easy to him as Viktor’s hand enveloped his.

How could Yuuri not believe, when Viktor smiled at him so sweetly, when Viktor’s eyes met his and held where others’ so often had misaligned.

“Come on,” Viktor said again, tugging Yuuri through the trees and away from the meadow and the forbidding presence of the standing stone. “I haven’t been to these parts for a long while to be honest. And I’m afraid I don’t remember much of the lay of the land. Everything looks much the same when you travel enough. But I’m sure there’s something to see somewhere, some party or other is bound to be about.”

“I think it is beautiful here.” The back of Viktor’s silk robes shone gently in the moonlight, the silver of his hair sharp and pale. Yuuri strode just half a step behind, hyper aware of the gentle warmth spreading from where their hands interlinked.

Viktor paused and turned, the blue of his eyes slid everywhere before settling on Yuuri and staying there. Viktor smiled and the edges seemed almost gone from it.

“Come on.” Viktor said again, once more leading them deeper into the forest. But it seemed to Yuuri that they walked a little slower now, and that Viktor glanced back at him more often.

A hidden trail led them into dense forest, and it seemed that vines and branches were swaying aside to allow them passage. A lilting tune reached Yuuri’s ears, and his heart stuttered at the eerie beauty as the song grew stronger. Shadows of dancing couples flickered amongst the trees, — the passing of light feet only marked by the rising of fireflies. The hum of cicadas was a thousand violins.

Viktor paused, his head crocked, and he smiled. He looked almost shy, here in the dim, where the red tinted moonlight fought a losing battle to reach the forest floor.

“It seems the faire lord has brought his court out here to the edge.” Viktor murmured and tugged at Yuuri’s hand, — their fingers still entwined, — and he brought it up to his mouth so his lips could skim over the skin of Yuuri’s knuckles —not quite a kiss but an invitation. “It’s not quite proper, but won’t you give me this one dance?”

The wings of a pixie fluttered up above their heads. And a blackbird piped a perfect staccato, a warning perhaps, or perhaps an announcement of the inevitable. Yuuri couldn’t be sure. He stepped close, placing a hand on the small of Viktor’s back, and it seemed the world lost its breath as Yuuri took the lead. Any doubts he may have had at Viktor’s vague mention of propriety were forgotten in the glare of blue and in the line of a heart-shaped smile.

Around them, the shadows turned to figures, lithe graceful beings who were not quite human and who smiled too sharply and too hard. Beings who danced like they had never taken a step without the sway of music to guide them, — and perhaps they hadn’t, perhaps this forest of fireflies and moonlight and flowered vines was all they knew. It was a good thought, a beautiful one — a foolish one.

The blare of a horn ran counterpoint to the trill of a flute in intermezzo, and Viktor grimaced, “it seems the others want to dance with you as well. I’ll see you on the other side.”

“What—“ Yuuri began, but no sooner had the word left his lips than Viktor was gone, and a tall, black haired fairy had spun Yuuri into a light, fast paced dance, and was leading Yuuri away between the dim of the trees. Fireflies rose from the earth, lighting their steps as Yuuri fumbled and recovered.

“No worries,” The fairy said, his sharp eyes twinkling, “it is a chain, you will meet your Viktor at the end of it. Forgive our intrusion, but we have rarely seen our friend quite so enrapt, — and it is not in a fairy’s nature to let curiosity go unstated.”

“We?” Yuuri asked, but the fairy just winked and led Yuuri into a spin and then, as suddenly as the fairy had come, he was replaced by another fairy with red hair and sharp teeth. She grinned at him as the music changed again, turning low and challenging.

“My, you are a pretty one, — and you dance as if you know of all our secrets.” The fairy’s pupils were square like a goat’s, — hard and strange and eerily piercing. She wore a gown of feathers. “Are you staying?”

“Staying?” Yuuri blinked, his senses so full of moonlight, and music that the question seemed distant and misplaced — there was no time think of the future here, not when the moment itself was so nearly perfect. “I haven’t given it much thought.” Yuuri told her truthfully, because a lie would have corrupted the integrity of the dance.

The fairy clucked her tongue at him, impatience written across her features. “You are human after all.” she said with disapproval, and let go of his hand, lithe steps leading her away until she was once more just a shadow flickering, — juts puffs of disturbed fireflies in a night of music and magic and ancient trees.

In Yuuri’s hand, the fairy had left an apple, red and glistening. He stilled, uncertain, as the music faltered and rose once more.

Arms snaked their way around Yuuri’s torso, and a familiar mouth pressed against the skin of his neck.

“Viktor.” Yuuri breathed, a flush heating his ears, and he leaned into the embrace, glancing back and up to catch the glint of ice-blue eyes. Viktor was gazing down at the apple in Yuuri’s hand, — and there were shadows of thought moving in his eyes, twisting and indecipherable.

“Viktor?” Yuuri tried again.

“Hmm? Oh.” For the duration of a heartbeat, Viktor looked lost. Then he smiled. “You know, the fairy lord himself has come tonight. He wasn’t dancing mind you, but we ought to say hello.”

Viktor detangled himself, leaving only the tips of his fingers on the small of Yuuri’s back. The music dwindled, slowed — became brittle. The world held its breath as Yuuri ran his fingers over the apple’s glistening skin.

A small body slammed into Yuuri, and he stumbled, catching himself with one hand on the ground. Viktor halted, his head snapping around to gaze into the deepness of the forest. He looked disappointed.

“What was that?” Yuuri muttered, brushing off the dirt on his hand. There was no sign of the person who had run into him.

The apple was gone.

Viktor shrugged.

“A meddler. Though of course you have already met a few of those.”

“This fairy lord, what is he like?” Yuuri asked nervously.

“You’ll see. We won’t stay long, I promise.”

 

*

 

A figure sat on a hawthorn throne, bearded and board, a pair of black, curling horns protruded from his brow. The fairy sat straight backed, his fleet planted on the earth with the kind of hard certainty only born from conviction and privilege. He loomed like a disgruntled god from his elevated perch, yet the fairy’s eyes were blind and foamy and his mouth moved with unuttered words. In his hands was what Yuuri might have thought a pale rock, or a chunk of ice if not for how it thumped softly in the fairy’s grip. The pulse matched that of a slow, tired heartbeat.

The fairy clutched the frozen thing with a desperate, mindless strength, and where his fingers touched it, they were frostbitten and grey.

Viktor smiled as they neared, his arm slung around Yuuri’s shoulder. “Yuuri, this is Yakov: lord of the Seelie and ruler of fay, ignore him if he growls at you, his bark is much worse than his bite.”

“Vitya. Where have you been?” The fairy lord’s voice was a harsh guttural growl. Viktor’s grin broadened.

“Oh, you know. Around.” Viktor waved a hand. “Here and there, really. I think that might be a more accurate description.” The Fairy Lord’s eyes did not stray from the rock in his deadened hands, but his eyebrows furrowed and his mouth twisted with into a scowl.

“You’ve been outside fay. I know this, for Yurochka looked for you and I can smell the iron on you from here. If you had more sense, you would do as I say, but instead you bring a manling before me and expect me to let him grace my halls.”

“You should see him dance.” Viktor’s eyes were warm, exotic oceans, his smile a gentle heart-shaped curve.

“Let’s see it then.” The fairy lord scoffed. “Let us have a dance of blades, a storm of swords. I doubt his tricks will measure up to yours.”

Viktor’s arm tightened marginally around Yuuri’s shoulders as Yuuri flinched back, a hand automatically reaching for the crested sword that no longer hung off his waist.

“No tricks.” Viktor said lightly, “Only honesty, — that is the beauty of it. But I’m afraid there can be no testing of blades tonight. My Yuuri left his iron at the entrance like the gentleman he is.”

“You should stop wasting my time Vitya. Things would be different if only you did as I said.”

“Most likely.” Viktor agreed. “But maybe not, and then where would we be? Perhaps it is time you let go, Yakov. Who knows, your hands might even heal in time.”

The fairy lord’s hands spasmed. Sharp, pointed teeth were bared in a perfect snarl.

“It is mine, — mine by right and fairy law! She gave it to me, — she gave it freely! I will not give it back. Now go, if you will not listen then you may as well be gone. Yurochka was looking for you and he is in a sour mood, — if you have even half a brain you will go find him before he finds you.”

 

*

“What was that in his hands?” Yuuri asked quietly as they strode away through thick forest and into a forest glade. A needling feeling had begun to tear at Yuuri’s mind, prickling with beginning suspicion and unease. It was nothing he could identify or pinpoint, just a vague sense of displacement — a subtle wrongness that percolated through the very fabric of the world itself.

Viktor shrugged. “Folly. But someone else might tell you it was the heart of a woman he once courted, — though I don’t see why it can’t be both.”

“He was in love?” But that did not seem right. There had been some affection in the Fairy lord’s gruffness towards Viktor perhaps, but Yuuri had seen only obsession and stubbornness in Yakov’s hands and glazed eyes.

“Love?” Viktor crocked his head. His laugh was without much humour. “Some might call it that I suppose. Yakov’s lady was the most frightening, intelligent woman I ever met, but between the two of them there was enough foolishness to last eternity — and so it does.”

“Now,” Viktor started, turning towards Yuuri and reaching for his hand. Viktor’s dry lips brushed Yuuri’s knuckles with more tenderness than passion. “I hate to seem dutiful or obedient, but if you will wait here for a few minutes, I will go look for Yurochka.”

Moonlight danced in Viktor’s silver hair as he walked back the way they had come, soon disappearing between trunks of ancient oak trees. Yuuri stood for a moment, then ventured further into the glade, a soft gasp escaping him as his lungs were filled with the ripe smell of fruit. Apples, and plums and pears hung heavy from every branch, and fireflies perched on every root and rock like a million tiny guide lights, steering Yuuri safely over the uneven ground.

An apple fell into Yuuri’s hand with barely more than a touch. It was very red.

“ _Don’t eat that!”_ A voice hissed at Yuuri from the shadows of an old, gnarly yew. “What are you, a pig? Are you stupid?”

Yuuri spun, the apple forgotten in his hand as he searched for the source. “What…” he began, and then stopped as he spotted a boy squatting precariously high up in a yew’s mass of branches. The boy — thin, waifish and with a mop of long, wheat coloured hair — looked much like other boys, or rather he would have, Yuuri thought, if not for the strangeness of his eyes and the sharpness of his incisors.

“You look like an idiot, gaping like that.” The fairy said, — for he was indeed a fairy, albeit a foul mouthed one.

“Um. Sorry?” Yuuri tried, and then flinched slightly as a scowl was thrown this way.

“An idiot.” The boy repeated, “What are you even doing here? No don’t try to answer that you obviously don’t know. Was it Mila who brought you here? I saw you dancing with her, though I thought she’d know better by now.”

Yuuri took as step backwards, away from the tree. He smiled politely.

“Listen, I don’t know anyone by that name, but Viktor—”

Emotion flitted across the fairy’s face too fast for Yuuri to identify. Disbelief, confusion, betrayal, hurt, — it could have been any one them, or perhaps all of them. In a heartbeat the fairy’s odd, feline eyes darkened once more.

“Viktor was the one who brought you? Well isn’t that just precious; it is no wonder you can’t tell your ass from your bootlaces. You should just leave.”

“Listen, I’m just waiting here for Viktor, we will go somewhere else afterwards.”

Light feet hit the ground with feline grace and suddenly the fairy was standing very close, his head barely coming to Yuuri’s chin — he was the perfect image of a spitting tomcat. The Fairy wrinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes. His teeth looked very sharp.

“You don’t look like much, but I know how you dance.” A serrated knife of bone flashed in the moonlight, oddly familiar.

The fairy looked so very young — it was hard to be scared. Yuuri let his words be gentle because sometimes you only meet kindness if you offer it first.

“I don’t see what looks has to do with anything.”

The boy blinked and looked down, his hair falling over his eyes like a gossamer curtain. His mouth was a tight line and his fists were clenched.

“You earned yourself three favours from me, and I have already given you two.” The fairy clenched his teeth, — they glinted white. “My third and final favour will be advice, because obviously you need it and nobody else is giving it.” The boy’s voice turned low then, his voice ceremonial. “Eat nothing that hasn’t been freely given and never take what is of fay, if you do then your life will be forfeit and ours to with as we will. Children may stay — for they too are of fay — but adults do not belong and so you shall die in time. Remember, if nothing else, that the fay claims all that is offered and we do not give back.”

A shiver shot up Yuuri’s spine. “Why would—“

“ _There_ I said it. If you don’t listen then you really are a pig. Or a—“

“Yuri.” Yuuri turned to see Viktor approaching, but he knew at once it hadn’t been his name on Viktor’s lips. It was the way Viktor said it, — the way his mouth curved around the syllables, — the name was exasperation on his lips and warm indulgence in his eyes.

“Viktor.” The boys spat. “I’ve been looking for you!”

“So I heard.” Viktor said drily and reached for Yuuri, gracefully sliding his arms around Yuuri’s waist and resting his chin in the crook of Yuuri’s neck. Yuri made a face at the display.

“You were supposed to teach me your double feint. You _promised me_. But you forgot didn’t you?” Yuri’s eyes cut pointedly to the apple still in Yuuri’s hand. Viktor didn’t seem to notice, — or perhaps he did and did not show it. Shadows danced in the depths of Viktor’s eyes.

“Yuuri, this is Yuri — or Yurochka — I assume he didn’t have enough manners to introduce himself.”

“It goes both ways!” Yuri bristled, but it came out more like a sulk. “And you _are_ teaching me that feint. I’m not forgetting.”

“Of course.” Viktor said and pressed his lips against Yuuri’s neck.

“Ugh. Just stop.” Yuri spun on his heel and began stalking away. “I won’t forget!” he threw over his shoulder and Viktor chuckled.

“Thank you for the advice!” Yuuri called after the retreating boy, and then elbowed Viktor in the stomach. Yuri’s shoulders seemed to hunch further and a muttered “ _whatever_ ” could be faintly heard.

“Don’t’ mind him, — he is very angry.” Viktor remarked with an indulgent smile, letting go of Yuuri but keeping a hand on the small of his back. “I suppose that is who he is for now. He found some secrets not so long ago you see, and he is the type to go looking when there are answers to be had. Now he is angry that he has them, — though I don’t think anyone faults him for that. They are heavy answers to know, and hard secrets to keep.”

“What kind of secrets?”

“The usual kind, I guess.” Viktor said with a shrug. “Parents and wars and worlds not fitting quite right. It is not overly important in the small scheme of things.”

“And in the big scheme?” Yuuri asked, but the tightening in his chest belied the answer he already knew.

Viktor smiled at him, sweet and lingering. The brush of fingers against a cheek was a caress more intimate than a kiss. A pair of wood doves crooned their courtship somewhere hidden amongst the foliage above.

“It doesn’t matter either way.” Viktor told him softly, echoing Yuuri’s thoughts. “And ultimately all it serves to do is make him angry.”

Yuuri’s eyes found the apple still clutched in his hand. He let it fall to the ground with a quiet thud. The apple seemed a small betrayal, — but it was an important one.

“What a sad thing to say.” Yuuri murmured, “What about finding solutions and evoking changes? What about hope?”

Viktor was silent for a while.

“Do you know what it means to be of the fay Yuuri? Do you know what it is that sets the two of us apart? I’ll tell you a secret; it isn’t the magic. You could have all the magic in the world if only you hadn’t forgotten how to wield it.

“No, the real difference is that us fay we understand the workings of our world. But you humans don’t, and you spend your lives turning circles around yourself, second-guessing everything that should be simple. You question your existence when all you really need to know is that you exist. You look for purpose when you should be examining desire.” Viktor shook his head. “You muddle everything unnecessarily with your uncertainties.”

“I wasn’t going to say magic.” Yuuri told Viktor in gentle rebuke. “And you’re saying that there is no point in hope.”

“More or less.” Viktor agreed gently.

Yuuri paused then, his eyes searching the unfamiliar stars for the words he needed. “They say people who come back from the fay always come back changed.”

“Humans always change. You change all the time, every day. It doesn’t have to be magic.”

“But sometimes it is.”

“Sometimes it is.” Viktor conceded, and he looked wistful, — almost longing. “But the best changes are the ones you make yourself.”

“Then, if there is change then there must also be hope — even here in fay.” Only silence followed in the wake of Yuuri’s words, and it was the kind of silence that stretched out into a moment, then two. They felt heavy and sad.

“You don’t change much, do you?” Yuuri guessed, but the words were hot and awful in his mouth. The realisation that the new-fangled remoulding of Yuuri’s inner landscape may not be mirrored in Viktor cracked open Yuuri’s nervous heart and filled it once more with uncertainties. Suspicion boiled over into a sharp ache behind his eyes. Magic buzzed and flexed in the air but Yuuri could no longer taste it on his tongue.

“No.” Viktor agreed, “It is a fairy’s greatest flaw.” His voice was fragile, the petals of a flower trembling in the breeze, a perfect porcelain figurine teetering on a ledge.

Breakage split the tranquil, moonlit night, and reality seeped in through the cracks.

 _‘Eat nothing that hasn’t been freely given and never take what is of fay, if you do then your life will be forfeit and ours to with as we will.’_ Apples and plums and pears hung large and ripe, ready for plucking.

“You brought me here with magic.” The red moon seemed to bleed the colour from the forest; midnight blossoms littered the ground, — the delicate petals now spent and turning brown. The vines hung bare. “You would have kept me here.”

Viktor blinked at Yuuri. Then He looked down.

Yuuri tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

“You killed Phichit.” A body lay broken on the ground and a youthful spirit was forever gone.

 _‘Adults do not belong in fay and so you shall die in time.’_ Viktor’s eyes, locked on an apple glistening red in Yuuri’s hand, thoughts moving unvoiced behind a veil of icy blue.

“All of this is wrong.” Yuuri could not seem to pull enough air into his lungs. “Why did I think nothing was amiss? Was any of this real?”

“I keep forgetting,” Viktor murmured, “you dance like you know what magic is and yet you have no magic for yourself, — not even the faintest inkling of it.”

“That’s not an answer. You killed my friend on the battlefield. How did I forget?”

“Why do you want to remember?”

“To mourn.” Yuuri’s jaw worked, his eyes prickled with unshed tears. “To let his passing change me, mark me, so that I can carry his memory with me. Phichit deserves as much. Tell me, has all your words been lies?”

“Fairies do not lie.” Viktor corrected gently. “Why would we? We like our simple truths.”

“Nothing about this is simple.” Yuuri bit out. “I can’t stay here.”

“You can’t?” Viktor’s voice was small. The ice in Viktor’s eyes shone wetly, like ice caps melting under the harsh glare of summer. Viktor looked lost, but Yuuri was not in a state to see.

“Home. The war. I can’t be here.” Yuuri set off down the path towards the meadow. Brambles tried to snare his ankles and branches clawed at his face. A haunting chant echoed through the forest of fay, the cadence and metre familiar, the voice boyish and thin.

 

  
        “Fairy child, fairy child,  
        Where have your parents gone?  
        They left you at a standing stone  
                on a night where no moon shone.  
        And into woods you wandered wild  
                not knowing this was fay  
        And all the while your parents wished,  
                you were away away away.”

  

  
        “Fairy love, fairy lord,  
        Why did you take my heart?  
        You met me by the standing stone  
                on a night the full moon shone  
        And into dance I poured my soul  
                not knowing you were fay  
        I waged a war just to keep  
                your world at bay at bay at bay.”

  

  
        “Fairy lie, Fairy shy  
        The truth you always tell  
        You showed us how to work the world  
                on a day no twilight fell  
        And into war we pushed us all  
                forgetting to this day  
        That once upon a time there was ****  
one moon to stay to stay to stay.”

 

 

The last words were punctuated by the crack of hard stone against wood.

_Crack._

_Crack._

_Crack._

The world shuddered, the earth beneath Yuuri’s feet trembled. The Standing Stone came into view, and by then Yuuri’s hands and arms and ankles were torn and bleeding. An owl hooted haughtily.

—And then the meadow was a graveyard, the earth turned red; the rocks fossilised skulls and splintered femurs. The battlefield smelled like decaying flesh.

But now, with chanted words — once so well known and since forgotten — echoing in his ears, Yuuri saw what his eyes had passed over so often. He saw the delicate cloven hooves on the body to his left, and the long sharp fangs now forever barred on the half-rotten skull by his feet.

Yuuri spun, halted, he gasped for breath as understanding flooded through him. They had been at war with the fay — needlessly, — even foolishly, and for what? No more than an ancient grudge and pointless pride. Yuuri had killed what he had always admired, and the fairies had killed in kind.

The edge of the forest lay dark and quiet behind him. To the east the war camp sprawled out in ever-expanding chaos, the first rays of sun catching on banners and standards hailing from all corners the world.

The field was deserted but for ghosts.

Viktor had not followed.

Yuuri emptied the contents of his stomach onto the bloodstained ground. Betrayal warred with horror. A sword, beautifully crafted and barely used, lay discarded and forgotten on the hard earth. The steel, inlaid with dark, matted iron was crusted with blood long since dried.

Yuuri fell to his knees and cried.

 

**Now.**

 

The final movement begins, a dance like flowing water, like change, like new beginnings and old wars. No music reaches Yuuri’s ears but he thinks he can feel the vibrato in his chest.

“I don’t understand you.” Viktor’s eyes are still lost somewhere up among the stars, but the tone of Yuuri’s voice cuts through. “I don’t understand how you can ignore everything that is going on. I don’t understand how you can resign yourself to something so awful just because you don’t think it can’t be changed.”

“But that’s not what I think Viktor, I don’t believe the world is so lost that there can be no reconciliation or— or _mending,_ or anything. There is so much _good_ out there, even in Fay, and I think you’re just too blind or too wilful to _see_ it.”

Viktor’s shoulders slump, he looks so smaller somehow.

“You guessed it yourself though, didn’t you? Fairies don’t change, and I’m certain Yakov never will.”

“What do I know?” Yuuri seethes, “And why do you think you know?”

Viktor doesn’t answer. His eyes stray once more to the skies. A cloud drifts across the swollen moon and the sudden darkness is startling.

“Will you tell me something Yuuri?” Viktor asks and cradles a hand to his chest. He turns back to meet Yuuri’s eyes, and maybe that there, is honesty hovers at the edges of his lips.

“Can you tell me what it means to love?”

“It is giving.” Yuuri says, and he is surprised by how firm the words are, by how much he means them. “And sometimes love is receiving in kind, but mostly it is giving.”

“Not a trait fairies were ever taught to have.” Viktor says wryly, but nods. “Love has never been what shapes us. Nevertheless, this is for you, freely given and free of favours.” Viktor holds out the hand he has been holding to his chest.  In it is a rock the colour of ice, — but there is no frost crusting its edges, and no sharpness to its form. Instead the rock is smooth and round, a piece of warm, clear summer sky, — or a star brought down from a sky far away. The stone pulses like a living thing, strong and sure. Viktor places it gently in Yuuri palm and then curls Yuuri’s fingers around it.

“It’s warm.” Yuuri murmurs, and it is. It feels both strong and fragile in his hand, and Yuuri knows he has the power to break it, — and that it will heal even if he does.

“I can’t—“

“Of course you can, in fact you already do. It won’t mend anything, — it won’t end the war and it won’t keep the moon in the sky, — but perhaps it will bring some balance back into the world. Besides, I would rather you hold it than carry it myself.”

Viktor rises lightly to his feet, a burden seems lifted from his shoulders and he smiles down at Yuuri with sombre tenderness.

“Maybe you were right Yuuri. Maybe I am on the wrong side of the fire.”

“Viktor wait.”  The hem of Viktor’s robe is as soft against his fingers as Yuuri remembers it to be, and he grabs for it, halting Viktor’s retreat.

“I can’t give you my heart, — I don’t have the magic to tear it from my chest. But I do love you, my heart is as much yours as it is mine.”

Viktor startles, and almost falls back down beside Yuuri.

“But you were right Yuuri, I did almost trick you into staying.”

“Maybe I would have stayed if you asked. I came willingly, Viktor.”

The silver-haired fairy shakes his head, eyes wide, teeth biting at his lower lip.

“That is how the magic works. You see what you want to see, not necessarily what is or what isn’t.”

“And? Does that make you any less beautiful to me? Does it make my feelings for you any less valid simply because they might be misplaced? The magic is part of you isn’t it? If I were to see you without it, would I even be seeing you at all?”

“Maybe.” Viktor says as if he doesn’t know for sure. Hope glistens in his eyes. The moon ducks out from hiding.

“I killed your friend.” Viktor reminds him. “I’ve probably killed more than one.”

Yuuri looks away. He has had time to feel how much the world has changed without him, and how much of it has stayed the same. Somewhere inside Yuuri, there is an awful broken piece of him that knows most of his family is likely gone by now. But it is only fear and sadness, — and he has only himself to blame for it. Forgiveness is easy when there is nothing much to forgive.

Yuuri meets his lover’s eyes, — drowns in the warmth of them and resurfaces a new man, — and Yuuri thinks that this is what it means to love someone like Viktor, that they can find renewal and change, in each other every day — every hour, every minute.

“I can’t absolve you from that burden Viktor,” Yuuri whispers, making his voice as gentle as he can, “but my blade has seen blood too, and if I have to be a murderer then I would rather not also be a hypocrite.”

Yuuri reaches for Viktor, grabbing a handful of soft blue robe and pulling him in for a kiss.

“Come dance with me.” Viktor begs when they come up for air, and Yuuri reaches for the bottle of fruit wine, dousing the fire with the last, sweet drops.

Viktor can take all that he is, Yuuri doesn’t mind.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
